Once again there’s a patch in my hand but now it’s LipService – and a particularly repugnant energy drink brand, Mojo (available in such lurid flavours as Red Rush, Blue Beserker and Orange Octane). It’s added motivation to suffocate You. And I’m upping the vigilante. I want my words back. When in the blue-lipped moments of hypoxia the air goes out of your palather, I’ll speak in ways that no patch would allow, as only someone with unbranded LipService could. My plan is to go to the repository and convince them that I’m a copywriter come to consult the books. They’ll open the silo airlock because real expression is unventilated, vacuum packed. It’s wormhole logic and I laugh madly at it – the books in their airless silo, me in my airless lungs. I’ll fold space and patch physics to get to them. In silent silos, I’ll expand the elementary particles of language as I read and write, preparing to unleash my big bang on LipService speak.
There is one problem. What if they recognise me at the reception as my father’s daughter? Copywriters are almost always from brand-loyal families with a corporate bloodline. But the proof of unbranded LipService must be in free speech, right? If I can use the magic formulas, they must let me in.
First there’s the shock of your re-entry into my atmosphere as the patch takes effect. Being in brand blackout with the silents for so long makes You punching your way back into my head feel like sharp metal forcing through a piercing that’s closed over. You come on caffeine-convulsive, giving me the jitters so badly that my reflection in the window appears to be performing a mash-up of moves like someone in the Mojo go-go break-dance battle ads. Your voice has the high-pitched synthetic quality of a recording played too fast: ‘B vitaminised! Go from shamblingly shambolic to the metamorphically metabolic in one chug. Feeling flaccid? You’re probably low on amino acids. Power up with B vitamins and natural stimulants. Get your Mojo back and go-go.’
I hold my breath until I feel the pressure of the carbon dioxide build up like a shaken fizzy drink. It could just be that the flapping canary in my lungs distracts me, but I no longer notice You announcing yourself. I smugly part my lips and allow air down the shaft. Time to go to work.
No one comes to the Lost Property window. I need to know if I really can short-circuit your brand-cramming verbal programming, so I go to the staff canteen in search of idle chitchat. This is awkward. I hardly ever talk to anyone in the canteen. I don’t have friends at the hospital; I just sit and eavesdrop on others’ conversations. Who can I call a friend when we are like two radio stations broadcasting on the same frequency, our crosstalk at cross-purposes? I end up sitting alone, hoping someone will appear. An hour later, I leave. I try again the next day and this time someone actually comes up to me. It’s the lab tech who assisted Dr Bromide and Wordini with my post-CVA testing. This isn’t who I should allow to hear me testing my ability to thumb my prose at LipService, but he’s seen me now.
‘Say hello reconditioned cogs for better cognition,’ says Stillwell.
This is the supposedly ‘friendly physician’ EmPath greeting that the medically branded use when they want to sound approachable. As one of the few employees at the hospital not patched into EmPath – or confined to the kitchens, like the catering staff – I’ve heard the white-coated colleagues mutter ‘May the morbidity rate never abate’ to each other in corridors.
He notices how I become mummified on hearing the greeting and looks embarrassed. It’s generally considered a no-go for medical staff to fraternise with patients or subjects. He has crossed the latex glove divide to speak to me. And he did try to help by offering me a way out of selling myself to either the doctors or copywriters. At least I think he did. Right now, he could just be keeping labs on me for the doctor. Either way it would be better to be smiley.
‘B vitaminised,’ I say with all the Mojo go-go I can muster.
‘The sensory cross-activation is still evident, isn’t it?’ he asks conspiratorially.
I’m confused for a moment. Wait – tastures, he’s talking about tastures. Asking whether I still have them. So, he is just scratching Bromide’s snitch itch. Only then I remember how afraid I was that those wires and electrodes had destroyed my tactile flavours. He promised it was only temporary. And it was. I don’t know what to make of him.
‘I can taste the tri-oomph,’ I say hiding behind the brand statement.
‘I have devoted a lot of neurological resources to imagining your sutured senses and the resulting percepts,’ he says resting a hand on my shoulder before turning to walk away.
The wretched fear had made me forget that during the testing he had also given me those little human touches. Really, he used them a lot, like the silents’ communing contact. I watch him push through the canteen swing door and remain staring at the spot where his hand was flat against the painted surface, as if by comparing the imprint there and on my body I can finger him out.
I get my chance to try asphyxiating You later when an old man comes to the Lost Property window. As soon as I see his face, I know which carton he’s come for. His photo was in his dead wife’s wallet. She carried bits of him with her like a lot of lucky rabbit’s feet – a lock of hair, a photo, an old asthma pump with a prescription label on it.
He talks for a long time. His LipService is a backwards and forwards of vinyl scratching, warping language into brand blather so he can’t seem to make his request. I let him talk, using the delay to hold and hold. Jaw clamp, fist clench. Tighten the valves to keep myself sealed against You rushing in with the air. By the time he gives up and just pushes his collection form through to me, I haven’t breathed for so long that I almost don’t register his action in the giddy spin of disco lights that appear in front of my eyes. It’s the moment now. I already have my words lined up, little paratroopers that throw themselves into the oncoming inflailation. I open my mouth.
‘Bride in the memory slipstream,’ I cough.
The old man starts crying.
I’d thought I was more likely to get unbranded talk past You if I fooled You as I was fooled when I heard the Eternal Flame salesgirl in the coffee shop. I had wanted to say ‘bride in the memory daydream’. To tell the old man that I know – as did his wife – that he wouldn’t forget her. It’s based on the Mojo prompt, ‘Ride the energy slipstream.’ The last word bombs – a parachute that failed to open – but I think he understood anyway.
The rest of the day, I feel a ginseng-zing and then start planning what to try next: one more test run at the corner shop and then the book repository.
Before I get to the till, I jet-puff myself like a marshmallow before cutting off the airflow. I’m a stoppered bottle as I point to a brand in the LipService catalogue. The cashier rings up the amount and I give her two notes and a handful of change. A couple of the coins slip between her fingers. In surprise, I almost allow my imprisoned carbon dioxide currency to escape. I just manage to keep the hatch battened. The cashier is scrabbling on the floor for the lost money. As she comes up, I go down.
Someone gives me a rude rehydrate, dripping Wholly Water in my face, and I regain consciousness. A couple of customers and the cashier are standing Mo-jiving over me. They’re worried I’ve had a second stroke, so I quickly say, ‘The ener-genie is out of the bottle and I’ve got my Mojo go-go back.’ After that, they quickly lose interest. The cashier returns to the till and the checkout queue reforms. I take the LipService patch that I’ve just bought and leave.
At home my thoughts are feeling the hip-hop in soda pop – with a performance-boosting, rule-the-roosting energy edge. You’ve bounced back from having the wind knocked out of You and are on a buzz. I never expected You to come on so strong so soon after I stifled you. Is this a vie for a vie since I started trying to gag you?